Normally the night of its monthly Second Sunday series, Somewhere There instead decided to open things up, inviting a couple co-conspirators to each bring an act to this show. This set, convened by Somewhere There's own Joe Sorbara brought together a crew of musicians to explore some sonic realms inspired by local master percussionist Germaine Liu.

Liu joined in for some of the pieces, while Sorbara was joined by percussionist Mark Zurawinski as well as non-percussionists Emily Denison (trumpet) and Anthony Argatoff (saxophone). For this crew, exploring Liu's pieces meant treating them playfully, as an opportunity to see what happens when the parameters are altered. So, for example, "Study for Claps" was approached in three different ways: first as a straight ahead pattern exercise for three pairs of clapping hands, then with horn improvisations triggered by the patterns, and finally with the horns joining in with percussive clap-blats. The idea of "imaginary percussion" was pushed even further in a pair of runthroughs of "The Sound I Want to Hear" (a piece by Sorbara), first as a drumkit duo with him and Zurawinski, then by giving the drum chart to the horn players to extrapolate a melody from the rhythmic elements.

[Somewhere There's Second Sunday series continues this weekend (August 13th) with a set from Québec's Sonia Paço-Rocchia offering realtime electroacoustic manipulations for bassoon and visuals, plus a quartet encounter with the SWT organizing team.]

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Founded as a blog about one curmudgeon's love affair with the em dash, Mechanical Forest Sound has grown to become a community-based archive of local musical culture. Assuming that "independent music" isn't just boys with guitars and "culture" isn't just some sort of pageant, MFS is an investigation of a wide range of artists, reflecting on concerts as shared experiences, acts of citizenship and a chance to get down — fuzzy photographs and clear-sounding original live recordings a specialty.

Current manifestations of this project include Track Could Bend, a monthly concert series featuring "improvised music and weird rock offshoots", presented in a casual environment.

At one point I wrote full-on concert reviews, and for longer I thought I would catch up and write about shows in the past. But these days, because of, y'know, life, do not expect much in the way of full show reviews — but live recordings with blurbs will be posted as quickly after the fact as is feasible.

All MP3's on this blog are audience recordings shared as a reminder of the excitement of seeing live music. If you are an artist who doesn't want their music shared in this way, please contact me and I shall remove it forthwith.